Parts 1-4 out of 5+2 of a Sherlock Fic With a Ridiculously Long Title
Title: Five Times Dr. John Watson Surprised Sherlock Holmes + Two Minor Occasions wherein Sherlock and John Deeply Disconcerted Mycroft
Rating: R (very light)
Spoilers For: The Great Game
Beta: The Right Honorable Porridgebird
Wordcount: 11,700ish
Disclaimer: No one in their right mind would entrust me with owning these characters. Oh, the things I would do to them.
Warnings: slash, obscure psychology bits, one scene-cut that blatantly avoids explaining the events shortly after the end of “The Great Game”
Summary: John is surprising in many ways: his courtship patterns, his recreational study of abnormal psychology, his selflessness, his gay-dar...
Sherlock - One
Sherlock Holmes’ astounding deductive abilities have been very well documented: in commentaries made by nearly everyone at the Yard, by the surveillance of the more secretive parts of the British government inhabited by his brother Mycroft, and in a certain blog written by one Dr. John Watson.
He was somewhat shocked to note that John Watson exceeded him in skill at a certain type of instantaneous deduction: “gay-dar” as pop culture called it.
Usually, the matter of anyone’s sexual preferences was irrelevant and of no interest to Sherlock whatsoever unless it had some bearing on a murder case. Sherlock had managed well at such deductions when he needed to, but there were times it had proven elusive to pin down without the need for further evidence. On the occasions wherein he needed to identify relationships between individuals, Sherlock could rely on a wide assortment of clues that were often screamingly obvious to him, but to generalize their overall preferences when the people in question were either very subtle or unaware of their preferences themselves--well, the clues took just a bit more effort for Sherlock to detect, and his usual lack of interest in the subject meant that he had never honed this particular skill.
John, he noticed, had no such hesitation in his assessment of a person’s orientation. Sherlock had first noticed it when they had briefly staked out a pub for an hour one night, keeping an eye out for a pick-pocketing ring responsible for a creative stream of identity theft, and incidentally placing John comfortably in one of his more natural habitats.
“That moderately attractive woman in the corner has been assessing you for nearly ten minutes now,” Sherlock observed.
“Hm?”
“Do keep up, John. I’m surprised that you have not yet made any advances. She seems your type.”
John glanced at the woman and half-smirked. “Lesbians are hardly my type, Sherlock.”
This had given him pause. “Pardon?”
“She’s eyeing me like that because she’s hoping to get a drink out of me by flirting, but it’s not earnest interest. That’s why I’ve not been paying her any attention.”
“How did you deduce this?”
John lowered his eyelids to half-mast and glanced sidelong at Sherlock before appearing to return his attention to the match on the television; although he was, in fact, subtly keeping tabs on the movements of everyone in the room via his peripheral vision: old lessons in alertness from the battlefield. “Years of experience with such matters tend to give one a sort of intuition. I’m not quite as good as you--I can’t say exactly what hints have tipped me off, but you wait another fifteen, twenty minutes, and her date will arrive.” His expression remained perfectly straight-faced, but the amusement in his voice clearly indicated that he enjoyed having managed to surprise his flatmate.
Sherlock waited.
The woman’s date, a bubbly redheaded girl, arrived within twenty minutes. They exchanged just enough of a more-than-friendly kiss to turn the heads of a few men nearby for whom the sight must have still been something of a novelty.
John said nothing, after glancing at the pair to confirm his suspicions, but he did smirk widely.
Sherlock deduced, then, that John’s years spent on “the dating scene” and his experiences being raised with a younger sister who favored women exclusively, had left him with a superior ability to instinctively identify--based on numerous very small social and behavioral cues--the sexual preferences of women at a mere glance.
Sherlock - Two
It was not until another case, months later, that Sherlock decided on a test of John’s skills in relation to the entire human spectrum. The pair of them were staking out a large wedding between two popular young men, for the purposes of learning all that they might ever need to know about the family of one of the grooms’ deceased siblings.
Sherlock installed them near the front doors just as the staff completed the preliminary wedding setup. “I propose a challenge for you, John.”
“Yes?” John arched an eyebrow suspiciously.
“I would like to bring in some data on your abilities to intuitively identify the sexual orientation of a large and diverse group of people.”
John’s eyebrows raised. “You’re serious.”
“Intuition, by experts in their fields, including very accurate if inexplicable instantaneous snap-judgments, is a well-documented phenomenon. You are somewhat more an expert than I in the dynamics of certain behaviors in women. I propose that we experimentally test the extent of your expertise, including whether or not your abilities extend to men as well.”
Intrigued, John smiled a little. “You’re saying I can deduce women’s preferences more quickly than you, and while you’re quantifying it, you also want to test me out on men?”
“Understanding people’s various motives is of great importance to me. Their sexual orientation can be a helpful point of reference,” Sherlock answered, without answering.
John’s grin widened a little. “All right. I suppose you’ll then keep track of everyone I examine throughout the wedding in order to conclude with your own methods whether or not I was right?”
“Quite so.”
“All right, then. What size of sample population are you looking for?”
“The party is supposed to be under fifty, so let us aim for more than half of that.”
“And I shall avoid the more obvious cases, of course.”
“Very good.”
As the wedding guests began to enter, John subtly pointed out some among their number. “The older woman with that terribly flowered hat prefers women, but she’s been married to men. The girl beside her is straight as an arrow. The man on her arm is only half-bent but he’s hardly aware of it. My guess is that if he’s a drinker, he’ll wind up cornered by one of the more predatory men from over there by the end of the night, and discover that about himself. The blond groom isn’t exclusively into men, but he’s mostly uncomfortable with women. His best man is the opposite--and might be attracted to one of the grooms, actually...”
Sherlock kept up, taking mental snapshots of each person John identified and typing notes madly into his phone in his own indecipherable shorthand. Some of John’s conclusions surprised him, especially concerning a few of the more deceptive transvestites in the party.
“That’s nearly thirty. A good enough sample population for you, Sherlock? The rest are increasingly obvious. Flaming like bloody torches,” John muttered into his drink: just soda, as he had very unpleasant memories of people with more potent drink in their systems at weddings.
“Yes,” Sherlock murmured, feeling both amused and a bit surprised by the playfully confident, expert manner John had taken on with each appraisal. “How well do you think you’ve done?”
John smirked. “I think I’d have done Harry proud. We used to make a game of this, before she started the drinking. She would challenge me to see who was more accurate. I think she was just sore that I knew her preferences before she did.”
Sherlock considered this. “Hm.”
“Go on. Wander about the crowd and test my findings, then.”
“Of course.”
At the end of the night, having completed his recorded experimental findings, as well as learned all that he needed to know about the families at the wedding--incidentally solving the case upon discovering the murder weapon hidden in the centerpiece of the two grooms’ banquet table, and discerning from it all that the police needed to know about the killer, where to find him, and who amongst the victim’s new in-laws had hired the killer to silence anyone who found out about his identity as ring-leader of a large drug-dealing gang the police had been hunting for months--Sherlock collapsed on the couch back at Baker Street with a heavy sigh.
John took residence in his usual chair, rubbing his jaw where the drug boss had managed to get in one respectable swing before John had landed three far better blows and knocked the other man to the floor, at which point Security had caught up and kept him down.
“How did I score then?”
Sherlock muttered something into the couch in flat, droll tones.
“Not in the fight. In your experiment.”
Sherlock rolled over so that he was face-up on the couch and stared thoughtfully into space for a few long moments, recalling all of the significant data and arranging it in his head. “Out of a sample population of twenty-eight, with an even gender split if we take into account gender identity rather than biology, you were ninety-two percent correct. Only two persons proved slightly more or less flexible than you first assumed. One, I merit, will later claim that she was unaware that she was kissing another woman, given her level of intoxication, but the other woman in question was not a very convincing transvestite. The other, a blond male cousin of one of the grooms and a surprisingly athletic accountant, proved heterosexual, instead of bisexual as you had guessed, based on pupil dilation in response to meeting attractive strangers. Thus you maintain a rate of almost ninety-three percent for identifying the sexual preferences of complete strangers, regardless of gender.”
“How long did it take you to make your own deductions about them all?”
Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “An average of four seconds longer than your given appraisal in regards to women, but only two in regards to men.” His eyes opened and he lifted his head to stare at John with a mixture of irritation and curiosity. “I insist that you explain what it is that you observe that proves so accurate so very quickly.”
John nodded. “Yes. I have actually given it some thought. When you read someone’s life story off of them, you notice their posture and their bearing, but a lot of the rest of your focus is on their clothing, marks or bits of residue left on them by the places they’ve been or their daily habits. When I was ‘appraising’ people today, as you put it, I realized I was paying some closer attention to other things. The cadence of someone’s speech is a good hint, but only if it’s confirmed by body language, how they carry themselves when they think that they’re being watched, the way that they laugh or smile also seems to be a part of it. The right combination of those cues leads me to my conclusions. Just like you’ve learned to identify splash patterns on the backs of people’s legs from different sorts of suitcases: it’s a mess of information, but if it forms a certain shape, then it’s identifiable.”
Sherlock considered this for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes. And when they do not fit an established pattern? You still fell short of perfection by eight percent.”
“People come in more varieties than suitcases. There’s always something, right?”
Amusement warming him strangely, Sherlock chuckled. “I profess, you exceed me in this particular area of deduction. I shall have to improve.”
John laughed. “Of all the matters someone might out-deduce you in...” He shook his head. “Let’s just say I never would’ve guessed on it being this.”
“That is why I never guess.”
“Yes you do.”
Sherlock smiled a little at the familiar jibe. “And you don’t?”
“You mean about people’s orientations? Not often. Usually I just see it. With you, I clearly didn’t.”
“Not surprising,” Sherlock murmured. Then, curiosity prickled at his mind. “What was your first impression, then?”
“That you enjoyed shocking people,” John mocked, then shook his head. “I got the distinct impression that you were not at all interested in women, but couldn’t quite discern if you were equally disinterested in men. Of course, that was because I made the assumption that you had any interest in sex as something other than just a habit that ‘normal’ people seem fixated on.”
“Common enough mistake,” Sherlock concurred, mulling it over. “That does explain your rather awkward questioning. I had thought that somewhat anomalous: you wanted to assure me that despite the fact you were a military man, my taste in potential partners would not have offended you, but given your casual acceptance of your sister’s preferences, it hardly seemed necessary to press the point further.”
“I’ve met a lot of men are fine with two women together, but show a different side of themselves when they find out they might be sharing barracks with other men of certain inclinations,” John murmured, sounding irritated, but not at Sherlock; he was irritated with people he recalled from his time in the war.
Personal. A close friend he lost in Afghanistan? Perhaps some of his patients, or... Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. No. Not ad hominem personal. Tone of voice is more protective than directly offended, but there is empathy in it. He was not the one being insulted, but there remains the possibility that he was simply not identified as bisexual while another soldier who was so identified found himself treated poorly by men who were supposed to be his loyal brothers in arms. An indirect insult, as well as an offense to his sense of justice. His reaction at the time: less controlled than the one currently displayed. It was not something he had contemplated overmuch before then: John’s sexuality had only ever affected life at Baker Street in the form of John’s tendency to insist upon trying to involve himself with women.
John looked at the expression on Sherlock’s face and winced. “Oh, God, what are you working on now?”
“You are bisexual.”
John shifted in his seat a bit uncomfortably. “To some degree.”
“Yes. Perhaps only a two on the Kinsey scale, but still more than merely incidental.” Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “And yet, you have only pursued women in the time that I have known you.”
Clearing his throat, John looked away for a moment, blood rising to his face. “Well. Primarily.”
Sherlock’s eyes widened slightly.
“Before I met Sarah. You were out for a week looking into that matter in France,” John explained.
One night stand, Sherlock mentally translated. As a footnote, and with an inexplicable sense of relief, he added, Did not take place at Baker Street. He blinked a few times.
“Why the sudden interest?” John asked, looking a little confused amidst his embarrassment.
“Because I pride myself upon being observant,” Sherlock murmured. “I find it disturbing when my initial conclusions prove incorrect.”
“Which causes you to look for more data on the subject,” John sighed, running a hand through his hair and sounding a little exasperated. “Of course.”
“Is it not common bonding behavior amongst comrades to discuss past, hm, exploits and history of this sort?”
“Yes, but usually over drinks, and usually it’s more give-and-take, and a little less being stared at and having one’s history dissected with a clinical level of detachment,” John countered. “I know you’re mostly immune to feeling awkward, but trust me, this is a tad awkward.”
“Hm. Point. We shan’t discuss it further, then.”
John let out a sigh of relief.
A long pause followed. “Except one small matter.”
“Christ,” John hissed, under his breath.
“Your sister is not aware of it?”
A long pause followed.
“No. No one in the family is.” He seemed about to add to it, but then shook his head and stood up, heading to the kitchen to make tea.
Sherlock watched him for a moment, without moving his head, then stared at the ceiling. Perhaps he was giving too much thought to the matter, but it had escaped him, and his pride would not be satisfied until the matter was fully mapped, charted, and memorized. He would simply have to manage it without further directly questioning John about the matter. That was fine. Direct answers were boring.
The family Watson: unaware of John’s flexible sexual tendencies, thus he has never been in a “serious” relationship with another man during any period of his life wherein they might have stumbled across it. John’s regard for men, a review: he does not treat them with the same immediate romantic interest or gentility that he uses when flirting with women, and thus must be accustomed to using a different, less obvious approach. Somber mention of his time spent in war and the inclinations of some of his fellow soldiers: a possibility that he either discovered his appreciation of the male form then, or at the very least indulged in indecent relations whilst there--potential for a more involved relationship than a single one night stand: high. Sherlock’s mind began spinning an interesting mental map of the history of John’s sexuality, but it felt as though it were still missing some substance. Sherlock tried a slightly different line of thought.
Only one incidence of relations with another man since the war. Lack of interest in most: clearly John prefers a “type” of man which catches his attention. Link back to notes concerning Afghanistan and relations with his comrades in arms. A slight sideways-skitter brushed his thoughts: distinctly uncomfortable, like grit scraping in a sensitive instrument. Sherlock’s eyes snapped open. He had not noticed them fall shut.
Disconcerted, he sat up and followed John to the kitchen, leaning against the counter with such an expectant look that John sighed in mild exasperation and poured two cups of tea, handing one to Sherlock.
“I can still hear you thinking,” he muttered.
“Mm.” Sherlock shot him an arch look.
“If it keeps you out of my medicine cabinet until another case comes along, I suppose I shouldn’t be bothered.” The look he shot back at Sherlock said plainly, But I’m still annoyed.
Sherlock nodded, and did not mention the matter to John again. Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock was capable of tact; he did not usually consider it important, but found that he did not want to make John uncomfortable this time. It was a peculiar and rather novel sensation.
Sherlock - Three
In truth, forming a clearer map of John’s sexuality took up only that night and the following morning before he ran out of evidence to reconsider. The rest of the next week, Sherlock spent trying to quantify the strange, intermittent reactions that breezed through his thoughts on the matter now and then, disturbing his neatly ordered stacks of mental notes. They seemed, strangely, to center around thoughts of the sort of man who might catch John Watson’s attention--and whether he might push John forcefully up against a wall, or whether John’s consistently surprising strength would show itself in a more domineering manner. Sherlock’s bow slipped and struck a highly discordant, scraping note, making him grimace slightly. Even without glancing over his shoulder, he was distantly aware of John wincing at it from the other side of the room.
With slightly too-sharp, deliberate movements, Sherlock returned his violin to its case. He was not safe from these disturbances even in Schubert, and he dared not attempt Mendelssohn. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed John shoot him a concerned look. The man surely thought that his flatmate was merely in need of another case, which was most likely true, given that this current little one, however trivial, was becoming increasingly disconcerting.
After Lestrade mercifully provided them with a string of sufficiently fascinating cases over the next months, something rather startling happened to John Watson’s wardrobe. The weather turned warmer, as it was wont to do when winter took its leave, and John’s jumpers--so necessary as he re-adjusted uncomfortably to London cold after so much time acclimating to and baking in Afghanistan--were replaced by thinner, lighter clothing: collared shirts of surprisingly good quality, plain in colour but they fit him more flatteringly than the jumpers. It was clearer, now, that Dr. John Watson was in fact narrow, still trim, and broad-shouldered. In fact, after one week of fine-weather clothing, John had been offered no less than six women’s phone numbers, just during his work hours at the surgery. Luckily, John maintained a certain professional paranoia about becoming at all romantically involved with any of his patients, especially considering that he had started out in his current position by dating the woman who had gotten him hired.
Curious about the effect of this development on his ability to keep annoying women out of the rooms at Baker Street, Sherlock put on a suitable disguise--making himself appear to be an elderly gentleman in dull tweed, with a mustache, glasses, and heavy brows--and subtly made his way to the pub he knew John would be present in: one of his more usual spots, and one wherein he had started two short-lived relationships in the past.
John wore a light, but long-sleeved collared shirt, the top two buttons open to just barely show a hint of collarbone. It was tan, much like his old army boots, which he had taken to wearing again over the past few months, as they were easier to clean and could take more abuse than any other footwear he owned, which was good both for minor mess hazards at work from ill patients and for the more impressive hazards presented by his time spent as Sherlock’s assistant, such as the one responsible for the bandage around his left hand. John’s shirt was untucked, making his body appear longer. He looked as though he had only just gotten off of work, and dropped off his tie and coat somewhere along the way: non-threatening, not obviously seeking attention.
At first, John’s attention was on the television above the end of the bar, his eyes narrowed a little in that way that suggested he was trying to deduce whether Lestrade would be calling them tomorrow concerning any of the crimes in the news report. He was, however, distracted when a man, perhaps a year or two John’s senior and just as obviously ex-military, took the stool beside him and ordered a pint.
Sherlock watched the stranger--short cropped brown hair recently cut, three inches taller than John, formerly stationed in Iraq, on leave rather than retired by injury--point at John’s boots and ask him how long he’d been back in London. Sherlock watched the instant snap of camaraderie in John’s smile. It was similar, Sherlock mused, to the way that two actors in a room full of non-actors will find common ground in discussion of theater, or two musicians: a bond forged purely out of knowing that the other person will understand the blood, sweat, tears, and depth of devotion to their profession.
At first, the two ex-soldiers merely shot the breeze, discussed the madness of London, shared a few humorous anecdotes, and generally spoke a language of barracks that isolated them from most of the rest of the room. The anecdotes then subtly turned a little more solemn and the pair of them at least once raised their glasses, not in unison, but at the mention of certain specific persons.
The stranger made the first move, subtle and easily dismissible, leaning an elbow on the bar in a way that turned his body just a little more to face John, moving just a fraction closer. Sherlock almost missed it, except that John looked the stranger right in the eye, his entire expression masked in a way Sherlock had never seen. There was something in it that the stranger reacted to. With fascination, Sherlock watched the mood between them subtly alter.
To the rest of the room, the two of them seemed to continue chatting casually, but they maintained eye contact longer, small gestures were more deliberate: a movement of fingers on the bar, a pause that contrived to let John’s lips linger on his glass, brushing along the edge of it slowly for just a moment. They moved no closer to each other, they did not touch, nor did they engage in any of the typical “flirting” body language Sherlock had seen John employ with women. Sherlock had to remind himself, after a few minutes, that the rest of the room was, in fact, oblivious to the tension. This was something that even a fellow brother in arms who knew what to look for would have had trouble spotting.
Then the stranger asked a question, simple and straightforward, and had Sherlock not been watching them closely, he would have no inkling of its significance.
John’s look was still masked--a far better actor, at least where this was concerned, than Sherlock had pegged him for, given how poor his day-to-day prevarication skills were--but there was something predatory and appraising in the way his eyes quickly scanned the stranger’s body up and down. He only hesitated for a moment, glancing at the bandage on his hand for reasons Sherlock found that he could not fathom. Then John stubbornly met the stranger’s eye again and smirked faintly in a way that Sherlock had never seen before: confident and challenging and wicked.
The stranger’s composure, for that moment, seemed in danger of slipping. Then the game began again, and they both looked like nothing more than old college friends, on their way to a bar with billiards or some other more active occupation than this one offered. They were even discussing something along those lines when they passed by Sherlock’s end of the bar.
For a moment, John half-glanced over his shoulder in Sherlock’s direction, as though something had struck a chord in his subconscious and if only he could pinpoint the source--but then the stranger elbowed him jokingly and John instinctively turned to growl something at him even as they both kept grinning.
It was more work to follow them now, later at night, and they didn’t take a cab. At first, Sherlock had thought them to be headed to the stranger’s house, but their route became more convoluted, and he realized quickly--and there was no reason, he reminded himself, for the thought to make his pulse quicken--that they were seeking an isolated spot to avoid being observed. Knowing the nearest places they would find, Sherlock was able to arrive ahead of them, and find a spot for himself that was both out of sight and easy to make a hasty retreat from, but from which he could still peer around a corner at them.
At first, John leaned against the wall, still smirking, but he seemed only half-focused, for all that his body was very aware of its own increasingly close proximity to the stranger’s body. The stranger pressed one hand to the wall, at a height roughly even with John’s neck. His other hand went straight for John’s belt, and the stranger made an offer.
John’s eyebrows raised. He expressed mock-surprise, and made a joke about the stranger’s rank and position. The stranger growled something back about doctors, and John took hold of his collar, dragging the other man down forcefully into a hard, almost violent kiss.
Both of them working off of muscle-memory, the affair was hasty, rough, and efficient. John let the other man suck him off, then pulled the stranger back up for another biting and fierce kiss as his hand worked busily within the stranger’s trousers until he came.
When John returned to the flat later that night, he was relieved to note that Sherlock seemed to have locked himself away in his own room. It gave him the chance to shower, clean thoroughly, and stuff his current clothing away far beneath the rest of the clothing in his hamper. Sherlock was used to John doing laundry immediately after a return from any sexual encounters, whenever he could avoid having Sherlock dissect the personality and proclivities of his lovers just by their perfume or how they had creased parts of his wardrobe. The consulting detective usually rolled his eyes, but seemed to accept the small bid for privacy, once it was established as John’s usual habit, and therefore boring.
Upstairs, Sherlock had haphazardly removed his disguise and fallen back on his bed, not seeming to care about all of the science-related hazards spread out on the seldom-used mattress, except to remove a largish block of ballistics gel out from under his lower back. Sherlock stared at his ceiling without seeing it, feeling strangely at a loss. He knew more about John Watson now than he had known this morning. The missing part of his mental map of his flatmate’s sexuality was complete enough that Sherlock should feel secure in his abilities to minimize the effects of John’s sex life upon his detective-work and their flat. He no longer had puzzle-pieces to put together toward that purpose.
Why, then, was he so fixated on a few meaningless threads? John’s momentary hesitation, the way that John had seemed distracted in some small way, even as he had clung to an alley wall for support with that stranger between his legs, a bitten-off syllable John had uttered shortly before he came.
It meant nothing, Sherlock decided. Even if some of the half-notions in Sherlock’s mind (ghosts of theories which required more data to become at all coherent) were to be considered, they did not fit any previously observed patterns where John Watson was concerned; he knew, now, the patterns John used when sexually attracted to someone, male or female.
He also knew that none of those patterns had ever been displayed in John’s behavior toward the world’s greatest consulting detective.
The thought was strangely flat, and came with a strangely numbing, dull sensation that was puzzling, and surprising as well because he could not identify it or its origin. If Sherlock had ever had the opportunity to feel it before, he might have recognized it as romantic disappointment.
Sherlock - Four
Sergeant Donovan spun on John once, whilst operating under the mistaken assumption that Sherlock could not hear. “Doesn’t it bother you?” she hissed.
“What, precisely?” John asked, in a deliberately low, neutral tone, not bothering to not-quite-whisper as Donovan seemed to be.
“Livin’ with a sociopath?”
Correct term for it this time, Sherlock mused. Perhaps she’s done her research. He smirked self-depreciatingly at the overwhelmingly ridiculous optimism of the thought.
John made a low, thoughtful sound. “If you mean Sherlock, then no; although I am curious as to why he chose that particularly ambiguous diagnosis.”
Donovan frowned at him, and Sherlock could hear the confusion in her voice. “You think it’s not right, then?”
“I think it is outdated, or at best ill-defined. Many diagnoses for abnormal psychology tend to be, but the term ‘sociopath’ in particular is one that’s more than a bit heavily disputed: some doctors think it’s a sub-variety of psychopath, some use it in place of ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’ and others think it is simply an over-emphasized term that never meant much of anything, except that it managed to work its way into popular culture. Sherlock isn’t a psychopath, as he is highly socially functional, has no sadistic tendencies (the reactions of people or animals in pain are boring and predictable most of the time), and while he may seem impulsive at first there is usually a method or an overall plan behind his actions, unless he happens to be bored. Other than that, he is antisocial, yes, but so are most savants.”
Sherlock realized that he had stopped moving, staring through the bloodstains instead of at them, and that he had been frozen as such for almost half a minute now. Thankful for his established reputation as an unpredictable weirdo, Sherlock was aware that no one would actually consider this behavior to be of any particular significance. He resisted the urge to peer at John over his shoulder with an expression of shock.
Donovan seemed equally stunned for a moment. “You a shrink as well as an army doctor, then?”
“No. I have, however, spent some time studying abnormal psychology for my own personal reasons.”
“Sherlock-related ones?”
“No. Rather before that, not that it is any of your business.” His voice grew colder. “Now that you are done trying to either get a rise out of me or distract and irritate Sherlock, I’d appreciate it if you would fuck off out of my personal life, Sergeant.”
Sherlock quickly assessed the last of the necessary data on the ground and turned to meet them. Donovan shot them both scandalized glares for a moment and then marched away hastily.
“Very good, John,” Sherlock murmured. “You’ll have to tell me, sometime, about the personal reasons you had for studying abnormal psychology.”
“I’m sure you can work it out,” John muttered with an odd half-smile. “You’ve seen how I react to killing a man, and you know how aware I am of what is and isn’t normal.” He raised his eyebrows at Sherlock. “Why call yourself a sociopath?”
“So that if Anderson had actually bothered doing his research, he would have been endlessly annoyed and frustrated by trying to work out which of the dozen-odd interpretations of the diagnosis I might have been referring to.”
John chuckled quietly, shaking his head in the way that meant he thought that was terrible, but if he tried to say so, he would be caught laughing at a crime scene again, which always got them strange looks. “Got what you needed then?” John nodded at the scene in question.
“From here, yes.” Sherlock stared at John for a moment too long, far too intrigued by the lingering sharpness in the doctor’s expression. Then he turned on his heel and headed for Lestrade, John following as he always did.
Sherlock had given some thought to the matter of how cool and collected John had been after shooting the cabbie, and how wonderfully surprising it had been to see his suspicions confirmed, that there was indeed a streak of something rare in the good doctor: something predatory and yet with a strong moral code. John Watson had just enough of that justice-edge, which was forged in war and thus valued practicality and reality over the idealistic nature of laws and rules, and just enough daring, to not only keep up with Sherlock Holmes, but also to keep surprising him.
It was dangerously appealing.
On to Parts 5 and +2 of a Sherlock Fic With a Ridiculously Long Title
Rating: R (very light)
Spoilers For: The Great Game
Beta: The Right Honorable Porridgebird
Wordcount: 11,700ish
Disclaimer: No one in their right mind would entrust me with owning these characters. Oh, the things I would do to them.
Warnings: slash, obscure psychology bits, one scene-cut that blatantly avoids explaining the events shortly after the end of “The Great Game”
Summary: John is surprising in many ways: his courtship patterns, his recreational study of abnormal psychology, his selflessness, his gay-dar...
Sherlock - One
Sherlock Holmes’ astounding deductive abilities have been very well documented: in commentaries made by nearly everyone at the Yard, by the surveillance of the more secretive parts of the British government inhabited by his brother Mycroft, and in a certain blog written by one Dr. John Watson.
He was somewhat shocked to note that John Watson exceeded him in skill at a certain type of instantaneous deduction: “gay-dar” as pop culture called it.
Usually, the matter of anyone’s sexual preferences was irrelevant and of no interest to Sherlock whatsoever unless it had some bearing on a murder case. Sherlock had managed well at such deductions when he needed to, but there were times it had proven elusive to pin down without the need for further evidence. On the occasions wherein he needed to identify relationships between individuals, Sherlock could rely on a wide assortment of clues that were often screamingly obvious to him, but to generalize their overall preferences when the people in question were either very subtle or unaware of their preferences themselves--well, the clues took just a bit more effort for Sherlock to detect, and his usual lack of interest in the subject meant that he had never honed this particular skill.
John, he noticed, had no such hesitation in his assessment of a person’s orientation. Sherlock had first noticed it when they had briefly staked out a pub for an hour one night, keeping an eye out for a pick-pocketing ring responsible for a creative stream of identity theft, and incidentally placing John comfortably in one of his more natural habitats.
“That moderately attractive woman in the corner has been assessing you for nearly ten minutes now,” Sherlock observed.
“Hm?”
“Do keep up, John. I’m surprised that you have not yet made any advances. She seems your type.”
John glanced at the woman and half-smirked. “Lesbians are hardly my type, Sherlock.”
This had given him pause. “Pardon?”
“She’s eyeing me like that because she’s hoping to get a drink out of me by flirting, but it’s not earnest interest. That’s why I’ve not been paying her any attention.”
“How did you deduce this?”
John lowered his eyelids to half-mast and glanced sidelong at Sherlock before appearing to return his attention to the match on the television; although he was, in fact, subtly keeping tabs on the movements of everyone in the room via his peripheral vision: old lessons in alertness from the battlefield. “Years of experience with such matters tend to give one a sort of intuition. I’m not quite as good as you--I can’t say exactly what hints have tipped me off, but you wait another fifteen, twenty minutes, and her date will arrive.” His expression remained perfectly straight-faced, but the amusement in his voice clearly indicated that he enjoyed having managed to surprise his flatmate.
Sherlock waited.
The woman’s date, a bubbly redheaded girl, arrived within twenty minutes. They exchanged just enough of a more-than-friendly kiss to turn the heads of a few men nearby for whom the sight must have still been something of a novelty.
John said nothing, after glancing at the pair to confirm his suspicions, but he did smirk widely.
Sherlock deduced, then, that John’s years spent on “the dating scene” and his experiences being raised with a younger sister who favored women exclusively, had left him with a superior ability to instinctively identify--based on numerous very small social and behavioral cues--the sexual preferences of women at a mere glance.
Sherlock - Two
It was not until another case, months later, that Sherlock decided on a test of John’s skills in relation to the entire human spectrum. The pair of them were staking out a large wedding between two popular young men, for the purposes of learning all that they might ever need to know about the family of one of the grooms’ deceased siblings.
Sherlock installed them near the front doors just as the staff completed the preliminary wedding setup. “I propose a challenge for you, John.”
“Yes?” John arched an eyebrow suspiciously.
“I would like to bring in some data on your abilities to intuitively identify the sexual orientation of a large and diverse group of people.”
John’s eyebrows raised. “You’re serious.”
“Intuition, by experts in their fields, including very accurate if inexplicable instantaneous snap-judgments, is a well-documented phenomenon. You are somewhat more an expert than I in the dynamics of certain behaviors in women. I propose that we experimentally test the extent of your expertise, including whether or not your abilities extend to men as well.”
Intrigued, John smiled a little. “You’re saying I can deduce women’s preferences more quickly than you, and while you’re quantifying it, you also want to test me out on men?”
“Understanding people’s various motives is of great importance to me. Their sexual orientation can be a helpful point of reference,” Sherlock answered, without answering.
John’s grin widened a little. “All right. I suppose you’ll then keep track of everyone I examine throughout the wedding in order to conclude with your own methods whether or not I was right?”
“Quite so.”
“All right, then. What size of sample population are you looking for?”
“The party is supposed to be under fifty, so let us aim for more than half of that.”
“And I shall avoid the more obvious cases, of course.”
“Very good.”
As the wedding guests began to enter, John subtly pointed out some among their number. “The older woman with that terribly flowered hat prefers women, but she’s been married to men. The girl beside her is straight as an arrow. The man on her arm is only half-bent but he’s hardly aware of it. My guess is that if he’s a drinker, he’ll wind up cornered by one of the more predatory men from over there by the end of the night, and discover that about himself. The blond groom isn’t exclusively into men, but he’s mostly uncomfortable with women. His best man is the opposite--and might be attracted to one of the grooms, actually...”
Sherlock kept up, taking mental snapshots of each person John identified and typing notes madly into his phone in his own indecipherable shorthand. Some of John’s conclusions surprised him, especially concerning a few of the more deceptive transvestites in the party.
“That’s nearly thirty. A good enough sample population for you, Sherlock? The rest are increasingly obvious. Flaming like bloody torches,” John muttered into his drink: just soda, as he had very unpleasant memories of people with more potent drink in their systems at weddings.
“Yes,” Sherlock murmured, feeling both amused and a bit surprised by the playfully confident, expert manner John had taken on with each appraisal. “How well do you think you’ve done?”
John smirked. “I think I’d have done Harry proud. We used to make a game of this, before she started the drinking. She would challenge me to see who was more accurate. I think she was just sore that I knew her preferences before she did.”
Sherlock considered this. “Hm.”
“Go on. Wander about the crowd and test my findings, then.”
“Of course.”
At the end of the night, having completed his recorded experimental findings, as well as learned all that he needed to know about the families at the wedding--incidentally solving the case upon discovering the murder weapon hidden in the centerpiece of the two grooms’ banquet table, and discerning from it all that the police needed to know about the killer, where to find him, and who amongst the victim’s new in-laws had hired the killer to silence anyone who found out about his identity as ring-leader of a large drug-dealing gang the police had been hunting for months--Sherlock collapsed on the couch back at Baker Street with a heavy sigh.
John took residence in his usual chair, rubbing his jaw where the drug boss had managed to get in one respectable swing before John had landed three far better blows and knocked the other man to the floor, at which point Security had caught up and kept him down.
“How did I score then?”
Sherlock muttered something into the couch in flat, droll tones.
“Not in the fight. In your experiment.”
Sherlock rolled over so that he was face-up on the couch and stared thoughtfully into space for a few long moments, recalling all of the significant data and arranging it in his head. “Out of a sample population of twenty-eight, with an even gender split if we take into account gender identity rather than biology, you were ninety-two percent correct. Only two persons proved slightly more or less flexible than you first assumed. One, I merit, will later claim that she was unaware that she was kissing another woman, given her level of intoxication, but the other woman in question was not a very convincing transvestite. The other, a blond male cousin of one of the grooms and a surprisingly athletic accountant, proved heterosexual, instead of bisexual as you had guessed, based on pupil dilation in response to meeting attractive strangers. Thus you maintain a rate of almost ninety-three percent for identifying the sexual preferences of complete strangers, regardless of gender.”
“How long did it take you to make your own deductions about them all?”
Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “An average of four seconds longer than your given appraisal in regards to women, but only two in regards to men.” His eyes opened and he lifted his head to stare at John with a mixture of irritation and curiosity. “I insist that you explain what it is that you observe that proves so accurate so very quickly.”
John nodded. “Yes. I have actually given it some thought. When you read someone’s life story off of them, you notice their posture and their bearing, but a lot of the rest of your focus is on their clothing, marks or bits of residue left on them by the places they’ve been or their daily habits. When I was ‘appraising’ people today, as you put it, I realized I was paying some closer attention to other things. The cadence of someone’s speech is a good hint, but only if it’s confirmed by body language, how they carry themselves when they think that they’re being watched, the way that they laugh or smile also seems to be a part of it. The right combination of those cues leads me to my conclusions. Just like you’ve learned to identify splash patterns on the backs of people’s legs from different sorts of suitcases: it’s a mess of information, but if it forms a certain shape, then it’s identifiable.”
Sherlock considered this for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes. And when they do not fit an established pattern? You still fell short of perfection by eight percent.”
“People come in more varieties than suitcases. There’s always something, right?”
Amusement warming him strangely, Sherlock chuckled. “I profess, you exceed me in this particular area of deduction. I shall have to improve.”
John laughed. “Of all the matters someone might out-deduce you in...” He shook his head. “Let’s just say I never would’ve guessed on it being this.”
“That is why I never guess.”
“Yes you do.”
Sherlock smiled a little at the familiar jibe. “And you don’t?”
“You mean about people’s orientations? Not often. Usually I just see it. With you, I clearly didn’t.”
“Not surprising,” Sherlock murmured. Then, curiosity prickled at his mind. “What was your first impression, then?”
“That you enjoyed shocking people,” John mocked, then shook his head. “I got the distinct impression that you were not at all interested in women, but couldn’t quite discern if you were equally disinterested in men. Of course, that was because I made the assumption that you had any interest in sex as something other than just a habit that ‘normal’ people seem fixated on.”
“Common enough mistake,” Sherlock concurred, mulling it over. “That does explain your rather awkward questioning. I had thought that somewhat anomalous: you wanted to assure me that despite the fact you were a military man, my taste in potential partners would not have offended you, but given your casual acceptance of your sister’s preferences, it hardly seemed necessary to press the point further.”
“I’ve met a lot of men are fine with two women together, but show a different side of themselves when they find out they might be sharing barracks with other men of certain inclinations,” John murmured, sounding irritated, but not at Sherlock; he was irritated with people he recalled from his time in the war.
Personal. A close friend he lost in Afghanistan? Perhaps some of his patients, or... Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. No. Not ad hominem personal. Tone of voice is more protective than directly offended, but there is empathy in it. He was not the one being insulted, but there remains the possibility that he was simply not identified as bisexual while another soldier who was so identified found himself treated poorly by men who were supposed to be his loyal brothers in arms. An indirect insult, as well as an offense to his sense of justice. His reaction at the time: less controlled than the one currently displayed. It was not something he had contemplated overmuch before then: John’s sexuality had only ever affected life at Baker Street in the form of John’s tendency to insist upon trying to involve himself with women.
John looked at the expression on Sherlock’s face and winced. “Oh, God, what are you working on now?”
“You are bisexual.”
John shifted in his seat a bit uncomfortably. “To some degree.”
“Yes. Perhaps only a two on the Kinsey scale, but still more than merely incidental.” Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “And yet, you have only pursued women in the time that I have known you.”
Clearing his throat, John looked away for a moment, blood rising to his face. “Well. Primarily.”
Sherlock’s eyes widened slightly.
“Before I met Sarah. You were out for a week looking into that matter in France,” John explained.
One night stand, Sherlock mentally translated. As a footnote, and with an inexplicable sense of relief, he added, Did not take place at Baker Street. He blinked a few times.
“Why the sudden interest?” John asked, looking a little confused amidst his embarrassment.
“Because I pride myself upon being observant,” Sherlock murmured. “I find it disturbing when my initial conclusions prove incorrect.”
“Which causes you to look for more data on the subject,” John sighed, running a hand through his hair and sounding a little exasperated. “Of course.”
“Is it not common bonding behavior amongst comrades to discuss past, hm, exploits and history of this sort?”
“Yes, but usually over drinks, and usually it’s more give-and-take, and a little less being stared at and having one’s history dissected with a clinical level of detachment,” John countered. “I know you’re mostly immune to feeling awkward, but trust me, this is a tad awkward.”
“Hm. Point. We shan’t discuss it further, then.”
John let out a sigh of relief.
A long pause followed. “Except one small matter.”
“Christ,” John hissed, under his breath.
“Your sister is not aware of it?”
A long pause followed.
“No. No one in the family is.” He seemed about to add to it, but then shook his head and stood up, heading to the kitchen to make tea.
Sherlock watched him for a moment, without moving his head, then stared at the ceiling. Perhaps he was giving too much thought to the matter, but it had escaped him, and his pride would not be satisfied until the matter was fully mapped, charted, and memorized. He would simply have to manage it without further directly questioning John about the matter. That was fine. Direct answers were boring.
The family Watson: unaware of John’s flexible sexual tendencies, thus he has never been in a “serious” relationship with another man during any period of his life wherein they might have stumbled across it. John’s regard for men, a review: he does not treat them with the same immediate romantic interest or gentility that he uses when flirting with women, and thus must be accustomed to using a different, less obvious approach. Somber mention of his time spent in war and the inclinations of some of his fellow soldiers: a possibility that he either discovered his appreciation of the male form then, or at the very least indulged in indecent relations whilst there--potential for a more involved relationship than a single one night stand: high. Sherlock’s mind began spinning an interesting mental map of the history of John’s sexuality, but it felt as though it were still missing some substance. Sherlock tried a slightly different line of thought.
Only one incidence of relations with another man since the war. Lack of interest in most: clearly John prefers a “type” of man which catches his attention. Link back to notes concerning Afghanistan and relations with his comrades in arms. A slight sideways-skitter brushed his thoughts: distinctly uncomfortable, like grit scraping in a sensitive instrument. Sherlock’s eyes snapped open. He had not noticed them fall shut.
Disconcerted, he sat up and followed John to the kitchen, leaning against the counter with such an expectant look that John sighed in mild exasperation and poured two cups of tea, handing one to Sherlock.
“I can still hear you thinking,” he muttered.
“Mm.” Sherlock shot him an arch look.
“If it keeps you out of my medicine cabinet until another case comes along, I suppose I shouldn’t be bothered.” The look he shot back at Sherlock said plainly, But I’m still annoyed.
Sherlock nodded, and did not mention the matter to John again. Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock was capable of tact; he did not usually consider it important, but found that he did not want to make John uncomfortable this time. It was a peculiar and rather novel sensation.
Sherlock - Three
In truth, forming a clearer map of John’s sexuality took up only that night and the following morning before he ran out of evidence to reconsider. The rest of the next week, Sherlock spent trying to quantify the strange, intermittent reactions that breezed through his thoughts on the matter now and then, disturbing his neatly ordered stacks of mental notes. They seemed, strangely, to center around thoughts of the sort of man who might catch John Watson’s attention--and whether he might push John forcefully up against a wall, or whether John’s consistently surprising strength would show itself in a more domineering manner. Sherlock’s bow slipped and struck a highly discordant, scraping note, making him grimace slightly. Even without glancing over his shoulder, he was distantly aware of John wincing at it from the other side of the room.
With slightly too-sharp, deliberate movements, Sherlock returned his violin to its case. He was not safe from these disturbances even in Schubert, and he dared not attempt Mendelssohn. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed John shoot him a concerned look. The man surely thought that his flatmate was merely in need of another case, which was most likely true, given that this current little one, however trivial, was becoming increasingly disconcerting.
After Lestrade mercifully provided them with a string of sufficiently fascinating cases over the next months, something rather startling happened to John Watson’s wardrobe. The weather turned warmer, as it was wont to do when winter took its leave, and John’s jumpers--so necessary as he re-adjusted uncomfortably to London cold after so much time acclimating to and baking in Afghanistan--were replaced by thinner, lighter clothing: collared shirts of surprisingly good quality, plain in colour but they fit him more flatteringly than the jumpers. It was clearer, now, that Dr. John Watson was in fact narrow, still trim, and broad-shouldered. In fact, after one week of fine-weather clothing, John had been offered no less than six women’s phone numbers, just during his work hours at the surgery. Luckily, John maintained a certain professional paranoia about becoming at all romantically involved with any of his patients, especially considering that he had started out in his current position by dating the woman who had gotten him hired.
Curious about the effect of this development on his ability to keep annoying women out of the rooms at Baker Street, Sherlock put on a suitable disguise--making himself appear to be an elderly gentleman in dull tweed, with a mustache, glasses, and heavy brows--and subtly made his way to the pub he knew John would be present in: one of his more usual spots, and one wherein he had started two short-lived relationships in the past.
John wore a light, but long-sleeved collared shirt, the top two buttons open to just barely show a hint of collarbone. It was tan, much like his old army boots, which he had taken to wearing again over the past few months, as they were easier to clean and could take more abuse than any other footwear he owned, which was good both for minor mess hazards at work from ill patients and for the more impressive hazards presented by his time spent as Sherlock’s assistant, such as the one responsible for the bandage around his left hand. John’s shirt was untucked, making his body appear longer. He looked as though he had only just gotten off of work, and dropped off his tie and coat somewhere along the way: non-threatening, not obviously seeking attention.
At first, John’s attention was on the television above the end of the bar, his eyes narrowed a little in that way that suggested he was trying to deduce whether Lestrade would be calling them tomorrow concerning any of the crimes in the news report. He was, however, distracted when a man, perhaps a year or two John’s senior and just as obviously ex-military, took the stool beside him and ordered a pint.
Sherlock watched the stranger--short cropped brown hair recently cut, three inches taller than John, formerly stationed in Iraq, on leave rather than retired by injury--point at John’s boots and ask him how long he’d been back in London. Sherlock watched the instant snap of camaraderie in John’s smile. It was similar, Sherlock mused, to the way that two actors in a room full of non-actors will find common ground in discussion of theater, or two musicians: a bond forged purely out of knowing that the other person will understand the blood, sweat, tears, and depth of devotion to their profession.
At first, the two ex-soldiers merely shot the breeze, discussed the madness of London, shared a few humorous anecdotes, and generally spoke a language of barracks that isolated them from most of the rest of the room. The anecdotes then subtly turned a little more solemn and the pair of them at least once raised their glasses, not in unison, but at the mention of certain specific persons.
The stranger made the first move, subtle and easily dismissible, leaning an elbow on the bar in a way that turned his body just a little more to face John, moving just a fraction closer. Sherlock almost missed it, except that John looked the stranger right in the eye, his entire expression masked in a way Sherlock had never seen. There was something in it that the stranger reacted to. With fascination, Sherlock watched the mood between them subtly alter.
To the rest of the room, the two of them seemed to continue chatting casually, but they maintained eye contact longer, small gestures were more deliberate: a movement of fingers on the bar, a pause that contrived to let John’s lips linger on his glass, brushing along the edge of it slowly for just a moment. They moved no closer to each other, they did not touch, nor did they engage in any of the typical “flirting” body language Sherlock had seen John employ with women. Sherlock had to remind himself, after a few minutes, that the rest of the room was, in fact, oblivious to the tension. This was something that even a fellow brother in arms who knew what to look for would have had trouble spotting.
Then the stranger asked a question, simple and straightforward, and had Sherlock not been watching them closely, he would have no inkling of its significance.
John’s look was still masked--a far better actor, at least where this was concerned, than Sherlock had pegged him for, given how poor his day-to-day prevarication skills were--but there was something predatory and appraising in the way his eyes quickly scanned the stranger’s body up and down. He only hesitated for a moment, glancing at the bandage on his hand for reasons Sherlock found that he could not fathom. Then John stubbornly met the stranger’s eye again and smirked faintly in a way that Sherlock had never seen before: confident and challenging and wicked.
The stranger’s composure, for that moment, seemed in danger of slipping. Then the game began again, and they both looked like nothing more than old college friends, on their way to a bar with billiards or some other more active occupation than this one offered. They were even discussing something along those lines when they passed by Sherlock’s end of the bar.
For a moment, John half-glanced over his shoulder in Sherlock’s direction, as though something had struck a chord in his subconscious and if only he could pinpoint the source--but then the stranger elbowed him jokingly and John instinctively turned to growl something at him even as they both kept grinning.
It was more work to follow them now, later at night, and they didn’t take a cab. At first, Sherlock had thought them to be headed to the stranger’s house, but their route became more convoluted, and he realized quickly--and there was no reason, he reminded himself, for the thought to make his pulse quicken--that they were seeking an isolated spot to avoid being observed. Knowing the nearest places they would find, Sherlock was able to arrive ahead of them, and find a spot for himself that was both out of sight and easy to make a hasty retreat from, but from which he could still peer around a corner at them.
At first, John leaned against the wall, still smirking, but he seemed only half-focused, for all that his body was very aware of its own increasingly close proximity to the stranger’s body. The stranger pressed one hand to the wall, at a height roughly even with John’s neck. His other hand went straight for John’s belt, and the stranger made an offer.
John’s eyebrows raised. He expressed mock-surprise, and made a joke about the stranger’s rank and position. The stranger growled something back about doctors, and John took hold of his collar, dragging the other man down forcefully into a hard, almost violent kiss.
Both of them working off of muscle-memory, the affair was hasty, rough, and efficient. John let the other man suck him off, then pulled the stranger back up for another biting and fierce kiss as his hand worked busily within the stranger’s trousers until he came.
When John returned to the flat later that night, he was relieved to note that Sherlock seemed to have locked himself away in his own room. It gave him the chance to shower, clean thoroughly, and stuff his current clothing away far beneath the rest of the clothing in his hamper. Sherlock was used to John doing laundry immediately after a return from any sexual encounters, whenever he could avoid having Sherlock dissect the personality and proclivities of his lovers just by their perfume or how they had creased parts of his wardrobe. The consulting detective usually rolled his eyes, but seemed to accept the small bid for privacy, once it was established as John’s usual habit, and therefore boring.
Upstairs, Sherlock had haphazardly removed his disguise and fallen back on his bed, not seeming to care about all of the science-related hazards spread out on the seldom-used mattress, except to remove a largish block of ballistics gel out from under his lower back. Sherlock stared at his ceiling without seeing it, feeling strangely at a loss. He knew more about John Watson now than he had known this morning. The missing part of his mental map of his flatmate’s sexuality was complete enough that Sherlock should feel secure in his abilities to minimize the effects of John’s sex life upon his detective-work and their flat. He no longer had puzzle-pieces to put together toward that purpose.
Why, then, was he so fixated on a few meaningless threads? John’s momentary hesitation, the way that John had seemed distracted in some small way, even as he had clung to an alley wall for support with that stranger between his legs, a bitten-off syllable John had uttered shortly before he came.
It meant nothing, Sherlock decided. Even if some of the half-notions in Sherlock’s mind (ghosts of theories which required more data to become at all coherent) were to be considered, they did not fit any previously observed patterns where John Watson was concerned; he knew, now, the patterns John used when sexually attracted to someone, male or female.
He also knew that none of those patterns had ever been displayed in John’s behavior toward the world’s greatest consulting detective.
The thought was strangely flat, and came with a strangely numbing, dull sensation that was puzzling, and surprising as well because he could not identify it or its origin. If Sherlock had ever had the opportunity to feel it before, he might have recognized it as romantic disappointment.
Sherlock - Four
Sergeant Donovan spun on John once, whilst operating under the mistaken assumption that Sherlock could not hear. “Doesn’t it bother you?” she hissed.
“What, precisely?” John asked, in a deliberately low, neutral tone, not bothering to not-quite-whisper as Donovan seemed to be.
“Livin’ with a sociopath?”
Correct term for it this time, Sherlock mused. Perhaps she’s done her research. He smirked self-depreciatingly at the overwhelmingly ridiculous optimism of the thought.
John made a low, thoughtful sound. “If you mean Sherlock, then no; although I am curious as to why he chose that particularly ambiguous diagnosis.”
Donovan frowned at him, and Sherlock could hear the confusion in her voice. “You think it’s not right, then?”
“I think it is outdated, or at best ill-defined. Many diagnoses for abnormal psychology tend to be, but the term ‘sociopath’ in particular is one that’s more than a bit heavily disputed: some doctors think it’s a sub-variety of psychopath, some use it in place of ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’ and others think it is simply an over-emphasized term that never meant much of anything, except that it managed to work its way into popular culture. Sherlock isn’t a psychopath, as he is highly socially functional, has no sadistic tendencies (the reactions of people or animals in pain are boring and predictable most of the time), and while he may seem impulsive at first there is usually a method or an overall plan behind his actions, unless he happens to be bored. Other than that, he is antisocial, yes, but so are most savants.”
Sherlock realized that he had stopped moving, staring through the bloodstains instead of at them, and that he had been frozen as such for almost half a minute now. Thankful for his established reputation as an unpredictable weirdo, Sherlock was aware that no one would actually consider this behavior to be of any particular significance. He resisted the urge to peer at John over his shoulder with an expression of shock.
Donovan seemed equally stunned for a moment. “You a shrink as well as an army doctor, then?”
“No. I have, however, spent some time studying abnormal psychology for my own personal reasons.”
“Sherlock-related ones?”
“No. Rather before that, not that it is any of your business.” His voice grew colder. “Now that you are done trying to either get a rise out of me or distract and irritate Sherlock, I’d appreciate it if you would fuck off out of my personal life, Sergeant.”
Sherlock quickly assessed the last of the necessary data on the ground and turned to meet them. Donovan shot them both scandalized glares for a moment and then marched away hastily.
“Very good, John,” Sherlock murmured. “You’ll have to tell me, sometime, about the personal reasons you had for studying abnormal psychology.”
“I’m sure you can work it out,” John muttered with an odd half-smile. “You’ve seen how I react to killing a man, and you know how aware I am of what is and isn’t normal.” He raised his eyebrows at Sherlock. “Why call yourself a sociopath?”
“So that if Anderson had actually bothered doing his research, he would have been endlessly annoyed and frustrated by trying to work out which of the dozen-odd interpretations of the diagnosis I might have been referring to.”
John chuckled quietly, shaking his head in the way that meant he thought that was terrible, but if he tried to say so, he would be caught laughing at a crime scene again, which always got them strange looks. “Got what you needed then?” John nodded at the scene in question.
“From here, yes.” Sherlock stared at John for a moment too long, far too intrigued by the lingering sharpness in the doctor’s expression. Then he turned on his heel and headed for Lestrade, John following as he always did.
Sherlock had given some thought to the matter of how cool and collected John had been after shooting the cabbie, and how wonderfully surprising it had been to see his suspicions confirmed, that there was indeed a streak of something rare in the good doctor: something predatory and yet with a strong moral code. John Watson had just enough of that justice-edge, which was forged in war and thus valued practicality and reality over the idealistic nature of laws and rules, and just enough daring, to not only keep up with Sherlock Holmes, but also to keep surprising him.
It was dangerously appealing.
On to Parts 5 and +2 of a Sherlock Fic With a Ridiculously Long Title